Visitors - Cheryl & Charles, Dancing Eggs and more

Our most recent visitors have been Cheryl - Pat's roomate from Georgetown U days - and her husband Charles. We visited them in El Paso when we traveled back to Albuquerque for Christmas, and fortunately they could return the visit in Barcelona.

Roomates on the move in the Barri Gótic!
They were here over the weekend of Corpus Christi, and on their first foray downtown Cheryl collected a brochure of related events that we could attend.

First up were visits to the 16th century tradition of l'ou com balla - dancing eggs: emptied eggshells balanced on water jets from decorated fountains (although one suspects the eggshells are plastic these days). These were on display in many places in the old city.

A little boy was fascinated at the Palau Resquesens.
As were we...
We also saw a dancing egg at the fountain in the courtyard of the old palace of the Counts of Barcelona (now the Museu Frederick Mares).
And closely inspected the one in the courtyard of the Viceroy's Palace.
An added bonus was that several places usually inaccessible were open.

The gothic Palau Resquesens, which is built against the Roman walls.
And the upper level of the 12C-15C Casa de l'Ardiaca, next to the Cathedral.
On Sunday we went down to see the Corpus Christi procession. Appropriately, there were plenty of traditional Catalan elements mixed with the ecclesiastical. Gigantes and other fantastical creatures left from the Ajuntament to proceed to the Placa in front of the Cathedral where they took up their place at the beginning of the procession.
No Catalan festival would be complete without castellers, who did a little tower constructing before moving off in the procession.
The ecclesiastical part of the procession was led by two riders on horseback, which posed a predictable risk - but BCNeta (clean Barcelona) was at the ready, following right behind with both human and mechanical street cleaners. It immediately was evident this was prudent.
Unfortunately, their efforts did as much to distribute as to remove the horses' contribution.

This resulted in some diversion - and sideways glances - by the altar boys who were next in the procession.
Those who remember the Catalan cagoner figures shown in the blog post from before Christmas may wonder if this wasn't all just a traditionally irreverent component of a Catalan procession.

Finally, to be sure traditional elements had equal prominence with the ecclesiastical, castellers saluted the monstrance as it passed.
It all made for a Corpus Christi procession with real Catalan flavor.